"All this region is very level and full of forests, vines and butternut trees. No Christian has ever visited this land and we had all the misery of the world trying to paddle the river upstream." Samuel de Champlain

Pennsylvania's environmental officials don't inspire confidence by ruling that a gas drilling company can stop providing potable water to families with gas-polluted wells.

The state Department of Environmental Protection granted Cabot Oil & Gas Corp's request to stop delivering water to a number of homes in rural Dimock, in Susquehanna County, saying the company had complied with the terms of a December 2010 settlement agreement to remove methane gas from the residents' water.

But residents themselves and even the DEP's own records indicate that gas remains a problem in their drinking water.

One resident, Bill Ely, describes the water coming from his taps as looking like milk. It wasn't that way before Cabot began drilling, Ely said.

Houston-based Cabot began drilling for the natural gas in the Marcellus shale deposit here three years ago, but regulators concluded that faulty drilling allowed methane to escape into the local aquifer.

A total of 18 residential water wells were polluted. An early plan called for the residents to connect to the municipal system, but this was deemed too costly.

In January 2009, the company began providing water. Cabot was banned from drilling in a 9-square-mile area of Dimock in April 2010.

Cabot is appealing the drilling ban. And the DEP has already granted the company's request to end the delivered water based on Cabot officials' claim that tests show the residents' water is now safe for drinking, cooking, bathing and laundry.

Yet the DEP had forwarded its own sampling results covering several months to the Times Tribune of Scranton; the data show that methane levels have spiked repeatedly during 2011 in several of the affected homes.

In five of the homes, the amount of gas reached potentially explosive levels. As recently as May, the DEP challenged the integrity of several of Cabot's existing gas wells, suggesting faulty construction might be contributing to continuing methane leaks. Cabot disputes this.The DEP released Cabot from further water deliveries starting Nov. 1. Controversy over the source and amount of methane in the gas continues even while some affected residents are suing the company.

Given the conflicting evidence, the DEP should not lift the drilling ban. And the agency should not have released Cabot from its water delivery duties until the situation, including the water, is more clear.

I'm the second generation of my family that lives in Richelieu, Quebec, in Canada. My family tree, both from my mother's and my father's side, has its roots in Quebec since the beginning of the 1600s: my ancestors crossed the ocean from France, leaving Perche and Normandy behind them. Both French AND English are my mother tongues: I learned to talk in both languages when I was a baby, and both my parents were perfectly bilingual too.